Chapter Six: Babel

Abstract

We now approach the last chapter in Genesis before the story of Abram, and thence that of his people, Israel. The present story is about Babel (Babylon), the city and the tower, and a great deal has been written about it, in philosophical and linguistic contexts, including work by Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. We will only direct the reader’s attention to a few matters in the story, which are extensions of the themes in the previous chapters. The story of Babel concludes the account of God’s work of creation.The flood destroyed nature and all of humanity and created them anew, and these are the descendants of the survivors in the ark. When they left the ark, Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, provide us with a short story about drunkenness and the revealing of nakedness. After that story about Noah in his tent, we read lists of the descendants of those sons, up to Abram. However, at the end of these lists, suddenly the story of Babel emerges, and after it comes another slightly different list of the sons of Shem, and from there straight to Abram’s “Go for Yourself.” For the moment, we should point out that the various ethnic groups that came out of the descendants of Noah’s sons spoke different languages, as if linguistic separation were not the result of divine intervention, as in the Tower of Babel, which will be mentioned immediately, but in the nature of things.*Here, the sons of Cush are named, prominent among whom was Nimrod, the mighty hunter. For our purposes, it is relevant that he built Babel, as well as, apparently, the great city Nineveh (if we understand from that land came out Ashur to mean that he went to Assyria from that land, and not that a man named Ashur came out of that land). Nimrod became a model to be imitated, inspiring a proverbial expression: Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before YHVH. There is no reason to accuse Nimrod of being a rebel against God, because that is not the literal meaning of the text. On the contrary, according to the divine plan for human beings, they are supposed to rule over nature and its creatures, so Nimrod seems to be implementing this plan very well, doubly: both in hunting animals and also in building cities, which spread mankind over the face of the earth. However, perhaps his acts are excessive, too successful, and thereby arouse God’s envy. So, we wonder whether Nimrod is connected to the Tower of Babel. For, as we have already seen, closeness to God sometimes actually arouses apprehension about too much closeness in God.*Moreover, this mention of Babel contrasts in another way with the story about that city, to be presented later, a story that, in fact, describes the violation of the divine decree of dispersal upon the face of the earth. Perhaps humanity also violates the command of King Nimrod thereby, for he had gone to Ashur with the aim of building Nineveh, and they march in place, settle in Babel, and do not set forth to disperse themselves farther.